The Dramaturgy of Ontological Verticality in the Wooster Group’s Theatre: Fragments of Memory in Search of a Whole

Abstract

My paper examines The Wooster Group’s India and After (America) (1979), A Personal History of the American Theatre (1980), L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…) (1984), and Brace Up! (1991) with a focus on the intersection between reading these works for theoretical analysis and experiencing them as live events as a spectator.  These works exemplify The Wooster Group’s aesthetic through its unconventional approach to history and classic texts, its commitment to questioning the nature of theatrical form, and the portrayal of its self-reflection.  India and A Personal History utilize Spalding Gray’s memory for use in spontaneity on stage, breaking the barrier between past and present and, through direct audience participation, that between performer and audience. In L.S.D., LeCompte challenges the presence and value of classical texts, and the theatrical representation of race, gender, and class in contemporary performance.  Brace Up!‘s theme of loss alienates form from content, character from actor, and process from result, deepening the audience’s perception of the possibilities of theatrical representation. Scholarship on these works has revealed the theoretical implication underscoring LeCompte’s creation process, which continues to The Wooster Group’s recent works such as La Didone (2009) and Vieux Carré (2011).  What is unique about the scholarship is that, even for a reader who has not encountered these works on stage, the scholarship has served as an additional layer of potential openness rather than as a meaning-assignment.   For the multiple ontological layers that arise out of the Wooster Group’s performance and the criticism around it, I term the Group’s dramaturgy “vertical dramaturgy,” and argue that Spalding Gray’s India and After (America) and A Personal History of the American Theatre, and the Wooster Group’s L.S.D. (…Just the High Points …), and Brace Up! create a performance text that reaches over to the critical and, further, to the imaginative level.